


Through Cold and Ice

by Quiet_Shadow



Series: Women In Shades [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Arranged Marriage, Betrothal Necklace (Avatar), Bittersweet, Cultural Differences, F/M, Family Drama, Family Feels, Fire Nation (Avatar), Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guerrilla Warfare, Internal Conflict, Minor Character Death, Northern Water Tribe, Sad and Sweet, Slice of Life, Southern Water Tribe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:41:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28451805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quiet_Shadow/pseuds/Quiet_Shadow
Summary: “You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.”― William FaulknerOr, some insight in the life and times of Kanna, formerly of the Northern Water Tribe, mother of Hakoda and Grandmother to Sokka and Katara, in 15 drabbles.
Relationships: Hakoda & Kanna (Avatar), Hama & Kanna (Avatar), Kanna & Katara & Sokka (Avatar), Kanna & Kya (Avatar), Kanna & Pakku (Avatar), Kanna (Avatar) & Other(s), Kanna/Pakku (Avatar)
Series: Women In Shades [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1859557
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	Through Cold and Ice

1\. Reunion

Pakku’s first thought is that she hasn’t changed; Kanna, despite the years, is still as beautiful as he has ever known her. He doesn’t see the wrinkles, he doesn’t see the gray hair. He only see her eyes, the eyes of the woman who has haunted his dreams ever since she left without a word.

Kanna’s first thought is that Pakku hasn’t changed. He still looks and sounds like himself as he makes her way toward her and she steels herself, opening her mouth to snap at him.

Then he falls on his knees and bow before her and she has to reconsider.

2\. Love

It is terrible, to love a man who so set in his ways, Kanna thinks as she plays nervously with the betrothal necklace around her neck. She has accepted it because it was expected of her, because her union has already been decided for her by her parents, her grandparents, and Pakku’s family.

She loves him, truly. She’d probably love him more if people were not forcing them together so quickly, so pressingly. He’s dashing, he’s strong… but he’s proud and he doesn’t see how much the ways of the Northern Water Tribe hurt her.

Love hurts, she thinks quietly, and she can’t bring herself to smile at him.

3\. Freedom

She yearns for freedom. Freedom to choose her own path, her own husband; is it really so much to ask? She’s not sixteen yet, and her parents are already talking about marrying her off. She wants more than a life as a housewife, she wants to feel useful, she wants men to listen to her when she speaks instead of dismissing her concerns out of hand just because she’s a woman.

Kanna wants to rage and screams, but she doesn’t. Who would listen to her anyway, when men don’t and other women simply accept life in gilded, icy cages of their own?

4\. Adventure

Her trek to the South Pole is long and dangerous, but Kanna hadn’t expected otherwise. There is a war ravaging the world, after all. But Kanna has prepared herself well before she fled the North and she’s not without skills. She can fish and cook and hunt, even in a limited way.

Even then, she has to take detours to avoid Fire Navy ships, take shelter in Earth Kingdom’s ports when storms are ready to break on the horizon. She almost drowns several times.

But it’s alright. It’s an adventure, after all, and adventures are supposed to be dangerous.

She probably won’t make an habit of it, though.

5\. Grandchild

Kya screams in pain and Kanna gently shush her, gently repeating to her everything is going to be alright as she wipes the sweat out of her daughter-in-law’s forehead. The pains of childbirth started around midday and have continued well into the afternoon. She’s not worried, though; Kya is strong and healthy and the baby is well positioned.

Kanna has helped to deliver dozens of infants already, both in the North and in the South, but this time it’s special. She’s helping delivering her first grandchild. She cares not if it’s a boy or a girl; she knows she’ll love them either way.

6\. Trinket

Kanna’s eyes dart nervously right and left as she walks between the huts of her new Tribe’s village but despite looking everywhere, there is no trace of any betrothal necklace on any woman’s neck. Nobody commented on hers either, nobody asked where her fiancé was, nobody tried to tell her and go back to the man waiting for her at the other end of the world.

The Southern Tribe’s ways are different. Men and women are more equals and they haven’t kept the customs. To them, Kanna just wears a pretty trinket.

And for the first time since she arrived, she breathes more easily.

7\. Flight

She flees in the dead of the night, without a word. By the time they discover she left, Kanna will be long gone and far, far away from the choking ways of her birth Tribe. Perhaps she should feel guilty. Perhaps she should feel sad of leaving behind everything and everybody she has known since childhood. There won’t be coming back after that.

She won’t see her parents again.

She won’t see Pakku again.

Yes, perhaps Kanna should be less elated. She’s leaving everything behind.

Everything but the betrothal necklace hanging around her neck, a last reminder to hold dear.

8\. Friendship

Hama is her best friend in her new Tribe. She’s determined and strong-willed and a talented Waterbender. She’s not a Healer, like all women in the Northern Water Tribe are, no; she a warrior, true and through. She uses whips of Water to make boys back off teasingly or freeze their feet to the ground as a joke.

It’s all in good fun, of course; no one is really bothered, even if the older Benders chide her sometimes, and it makes Kanna laughs, because no other woman she has known until now would have dared.

Hama is strong, Kanna thinks.

But of course, so is she.

9\. Raid

They come the most often at noon, when the sun is at its zenith and they are the strongest. Never, never at night, when Tui might be watching over her blessed and fueling their power. The black snow, the ashes of their thrice damned metal ships, heralds their arrival.

Fire rains upon the villages. It never lasts too long and their retire as fast as they have come but when they do, there are always a few less face around. Waterbenders, mostly, killed or captured.

Kanna does a head count regularly and try to smother her rage and her pain. Cursed be the Fire Nation.

10\. Miracle

It happens fast; one moment Sokka is teasing her sister, making her angry and the next, little Katara thumps on the ground and the ice cracks under her brother’s feet, making him yelp and tumble.

Kanna’s head isn’t the only one which whip around to look at the toddler. Her mouth hangs open even as little Katara is swept up in her mother’s arms.

Kanna… Kanna can only cry. Hope and horror war insides her. Hope, because she’s a Waterbender, a miracle. Horror, because she remembers too well what happened to all the others.

Her granddaughter is a Waterbender, and Kanna cries.

11\. Losing

They’re losing. The warriors of the Tribe don’t want to say it, don’t want to admit to the women and children it’s hopeless, but they’re slowly losing. In fact, they have lost since the moment the Fire Nation started to take away their Waterbenders. If they had realized sooner… if they had managed to find a way to free them before they disappeared in the bellies of those metal, unnatural ships…

But they didn’t. They took everyone, even the children. Everyone but Hama, the last Waterbender of the South Pole.

Hama’s eyes are hard. Kanna squeezes her hand. They can only wait.

12\. Pride

The men of the Tribes are going away, and Kanna watches impassively as they board their boats and get ready to leave. Hakoda will lead them, as he already did for years. He has grow so much, her son, both in strength and wisdom, a fine Chieftain for all to see.

The Fire Nation needs to be stopped, they all know it, and the Earth Kingdom’s troops could use the help of all Watertribe warriors ready to fight.

Kanna feels her heart swell in her chest as she watches them go, ships disappearing over the horizon. She’s proud of her son.

But the mother in her already worries.

13\. Funeral

Her eyes are dry as she washes the corpse and starts wrapping it in bandages for the funeral. The smell of burned flesh is atrocious as it fills the hut, but she’s used to it, much to her disquiet. Other women of the Tribes offered to help, but she pushed them away. She also pushed away Hakoda and sent him back to his children; they need her more than Kanna.

It’s something she has to do alone. There is no need for Hakoda to see Kya’s sad state any longer than necessary. And her grandchildren… 

Her hands shakes, but she won’t cry. Not until she’s done.

14\. Airbender

There is an Air Nomad in their village. An actual Air Nomad, a child even younger than her grandchildren, and Kanna can only startle and stare, like everyone else. It’s not possible, she tells herself. The Fire Nation destroyed the Airbenders, just like they destroyed most of the Southern Water Tribes when they took away their Benders. They died long before Kanna herself was born.

Briefly, she has to wonder if perhaps she has died and is in the Spirit World, or if perhaps they all accidentally stumbled in a Spirit Tale.

But he looks real and he breathes, and Kanna takes a step forward…

15\. Heartbreak

The Fire Nation soldiers let them follow them to their ship. Kanna isn’t sure why. Perhaps because there are only elderly and women among them, all of them harmless. Perhaps because they want them to be witness and spread the tale.

Kanna can’t bring herself to care. All she sees is Hama being led away, hands chained before her, surrounded by skull-faced enemies.

Kanna holds her friend’s gaze until the ship’s door close, tears in her eyes.

Her heart is breaking as the ship sails away; gone forever, her mind whispers. Gone forever, the last Waterbender of the South Pole and her best friend.


End file.
